This Is War
by MyWaywardWinchester
Summary: Sam and Dean are soldiers during the Civil War and destiny has not been kind. Fighting for different sides but for the same cause, the brothers and a medic who goes by Castiel struggle to regain the lives they once knew and balance the new one they've found in each other. In-progress.
1. Chapter 1

**July 2, 1863**

Castiel's Journal

6:05am

My brothers are vanishing fast on the battlefield. Most of them collapse twenty at a time and are strewn ruthlessly across the blood-stained pasture I tread upon. The smell of rotting flesh is retched, and often intolerable, but it eventually settles in.

I have at least a couple hundred men placed in front of me every day, injured, broken… both… amputation is usually my specialty… however, the one man I focus my attention to today is not in my facility. No, there's a man outside. His thin stature slumps, and his focus never averts the damp grassland below while he reloads his rifle. I don't know this man well. Actually, I don't know him at all. But there's something different about him, something about his stance and the way he engrosses himself in the weapon, something in his emerald eyes when he stares off into space… something that I couldn't quite depict, at least not from here… sadness, emptiness… both?

I don't know the man's name, and I doubt he knows mine. I want to reassure him, cleanse him of whatever doubts he's experiencing… but what can I do? Hell's surely reigned over all of us.

I once had a family at home, wife and a girl. That is, until the government shipped them from the heartland and onto a reservation, some desolate place in the South… Mississippi? Missouri? Hell, I don't know anymore. It's all the same in the end.

I decide to wade it out until tomorrow.

Dean's Journal

11:52am

Fucking Confederates. Fucking Confederates with their button down blue collar uniforms and cocky ass attitudes… might as well be shouting "Hey, lookit me, I'm a big fuckin' blueberry dick!"

Without cavalry, we face a huge quandary. We either submit to the humidity, and keep what's left of our vanity, or pursue with little ammo and dignity.

We're told were heading to a different field. I'm supposed to follow orders, obey the man who yells in my face and tells me he couldn't give a rat's ass if I'm dead or alive in the end. As long as the job is done, as long as the Union wins the Battle, nothing else matters. Nothing matters. Not the lives of my brothers, not the lives of their families waiting at home with a gift basket, and especially not the lives of my family. My friends already despise me enough as it is, knowing my bloodline. And it sure as hell doesn't help when your brother fights on the opposing side.

My brother. I miss my brother. Remember, Sammy? There was a time when you and I weren't so different, when the things we wanted weren't so different. I'm sorry, little brother.

I didn't choose to be here, I was forced into this life. I'm not even a very good fighter. I just want to go home, hopefully alive.

Sam's Journal

4:10pm

Yes, Dad. Sorry, _Sir_. _How many?_ Thirty five bodies and counting. _You can do better._

It's always the same questions. Dad wants this, Dad wants that. Dad wants the job done without an ounce of bloodshed on my gun. Dad wants me to be the "best damn soldier to ever walk the field." Dad wants a lot of things. I wish I could give him the luxury of reassurance, _Yes, Dad, I can. I promise._

We're going to march on Union territory in twenty minutes. Dad thinks I've forgotten. Dad thinks a lot of things.

He may have been the General, and he may be the best damn one yet, but my father doesn't know a damn thing about me.

My father thinks a lot of things. I doubt any of them are about me.

Castiel's Journal

4:47pm

Gabe rolled in on a stretcher today. He lost his arm on the field… surprise attack from the Feds. I can't remember being more frantic in my life, rushing to roll him out of the stretcher and onto a more stable, more conforming bed… there was so much blood… I can't remember seeing him so worried in my life...any man for that matter… it's all in motions… I grabbed my blade and started slicing … his mouth was agape and his eyes were soundlessly searching mine… every thread of flesh seemed harder to slice, it's peculiar especially because this is usually an easy process with any other patient I'm handed but Gabe had always been tough, makes sense I suppose—his interior would be much like his exterior…. so much blood….usually it doesn't faze me any, especially under my tight schedule to get the soldiers back on the field… he was bracing his other hand on the headboard behind him until his knuckles were practically white…

Then, then the most unceremonious thing happened…. his eyes rolled back to his head… his hand was no longer bound to the bedpost. He was still. I'd never seen a man look so at ease in his life.

July 2, 1863 at 4:50pm, my brother Gabe died.

Dean's Journal

6:15pm

I meant it when I said I didn't choose this life; I was chosen by prophecy, pushed by fate, and driven by insanity.

Now I'm paralyzed from the waist down and somehow I don't feel a damn thing. I don't even have the will to care. At first I was afraid but then I remembered were all fucked in the end. That notion stilled in my mind and somehow made me feel better.

Surprisingly getting shot in the leg doesn't ruin my night…and not even Luke, who just stared smiling at me as I got shot, that son of a bitch. I met a man in the infirmary, a nurse there, looked highly qualified. Or, at least I thought so until I heard him yapping with his assistant about how he refused to cut off my leg. Everyone was urging the guy to "just get the fucking job done and get the next one on the gurney"… some guy, Gage, Gabe… well, anyway, needless to say this guy was a basket case. He stood literally looking down at me for at least a full minute and denied that cutting it off would be the best solution. I know he knew. I know he knew the risks of leaving it well enough alone. If I wasn't so disoriented from the blast I would have told the guy to go straight to hell and cut off the damn thing. He was a nurse, it was his job to aid my pain, not prolong it. I could have died right there on the table. But honestly, I wouldn't really care at this point…

But anyway, this guy, he ended up rolling me out of the building, got me my own wheelchair and everything… course after I insisted I wasn't a baby for the thousandth time and the chair was later replaced with crutches… and we sat down outside and just… talked. And I realized he wasn't so bad.

It's hard to find saints in Hell.

Sam's Journal

7:01pm

I took out fifty soldiers in less than three hours. This is a ruthless job. I'll never understand how Dean's been able to sustain himself this long… kill people without a second glance at who you're killing or even _why_ you're killing them… the looks on their face after they're shot are forever stained into my mind, tainted like the rotten apple I've always thought myself to be in the family tree. Dean's always been the smarter, faster and stronger one. _Dean_. I shot my own brother on the battlefield. What kind of twisted person does that?

Feelings. Great, I absolutely love to talk about those.

I don't know how I feel. I know what I'm doing is wrong… but somehow I don't feel guilty. I know I shouldn't be here and I know I don't have to be… but something keeps drawing me back in. And Dad was never proud of me until the day I joined the army. I feel like I want to make him proud, and if my life will be worth something at least I'll die trying.

Now Dad's talking with General Meade—or someone under his command, I can never tell anymore—about a soldier from the Yanks, Luke something or other. Says he's a damn good fighter and has an incredible intellectual mentality. In other words, he's strategically smart. Not many men I know of who have the brains for the army. I mean sure, some of it is strategic, if you call cocking and loading a rifle strategic. Most of it is duck and run, anything a chimpanzee could do.

I think I just insulted myself.

I think I also just got traded for a Yank.

This should be interesting.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam's Journal

7:01pm

I took out fifty soldiers in less than three hours. This is a ruthless job. I'll never understand how Dean's been able to sustain himself this long… kill people without a second glance at who you're killing or even _why_ you're killing them… the looks on their face after they're shot are forever stained into my mind, tainted like the rotten apple I've always thought myself to be in the family tree. Dean's always been the smarter, faster and stronger one. _Dean_. I shot my own brother on the battlefield. What kind of twisted person does that?

Feelings. Great, I absolutely love to talk about those.

I don't know how I feel. I know what I'm doing is wrong… but somehow I don't feel guilty. I know I shouldn't be here and I know I don't have to be… but something keeps drawing me back in. And Dad was never proud of me until the day I joined the army. I feel like I want to make him proud, and if my life will be worth something at least I'll die trying.

Now Dad's talking with General Meade—or someone under his command, I can never tell anymore—about a soldier from the Yanks, Luke something or other. Says he's a damn good fighter and has an incredible intellectual mentality. In other words, he's strategically smart. Not many men I know of who have the brains for the army. I mean sure, some of it is strategic, if you call cocking and loading a rifle strategic. Most of it is duck and run, anything a chimpanzee could do.

I think I just insulted myself.

I think I also just got traded for a Yank.

This should be interesting.

* * *

Castiel's Journal

11:51pm

My shift ended hours ago even though I had to work a few more on another. We've been working around the clock for almost forty eight hours… you get accustomed to the insomnia once you learn to tolerate the paranoia and midday jitters. I'm sure the faculty wasn't too happy when I told them I had to take a five minute break that turned out unintentionally to be an hour long.

At this point, I couldn't possibly care less if I lost my job. Not only the job is a nuisance but because I used my alleged five minutes on a man that has been keeping me up for as long as I've been.

At first we talked about politics and current affairs—more or less like the one we're living now— and then we worked our way to talking about practically everything above and behind the Heavens. We shared a good laugh here and there, a rarity in itself, but there was one moment that I swear I'll never forget. I may be exhausted but I remember the conversation almost impeccably.

It was around the time he asked me why I was in the medical field that I handed him a picture of my wife and daughter. He shared a smile and I told him my story before he could say any more.

"I had business in Atlanta, going to college and discovering who I wanted to be. I read in the local paper that something was plaguing the entire city… Malaria, they thought…"

"What was it?"

"Tuberculosis. I'm not sure if you're aware but those two are not interchangeable."

"I am."

"You sound like you're speaking from experience," I say carefully.

He nodded and stared forlornly to the distance. I knew I had unintentionally found his weakness. "My mom, uh—she died from the disease a few days after she had my brother… hospital didn't exactly know their facility had TB."

I understand and acknowledge his pain like it was my own. I then tell him that I've had the same experience and after he hands the picture back to me I tell him I was balancing a side job on a farm where I met her on the field… of course it's totally immoral to fornicate and let alone have relations of any kind with a slave but I fell in love with her, and we were blissful, especially after the birth of our daughter. We lived a double life and somehow it worked for the both of us… until she grew weak, depressed, plagued by fatigue…

"What happened?" he had asked, shifting his gaze to mine. I forced myself to look at him.

I couldn't take her to the hospice for any kind of treatment. Hospices didn't treat Negros.

He said my name fondly, and then reached out to place a cautioning hand on my back. Then the most miraculous thing happened. Miraculous in such a way that uncertainty and angst united when his lips met mine. I didn't exactly return the embrace… but I didn't pull away. Not until he did.

I asked him what that was for. His answer is what keeps me awake, writhing like a tapeworm inside my mind. This is why I am writing this entry.

"It's the end of our days. We might as well indulge."

* * *

**July 3, 1863**

Dean's Journal

8:05am

Finally the Feds know what the hell they're doing.

Well, minus being up-the-ass prejudiced sons of bitches and handicapped gun shooters, they know what they're doing.

One of our prized soldiers, Meade's precious son Luke, is getting swapped. Luke, the same guy who might as well kicked me when I got shot… I could think of a thousand things that I would like to do to that man if I wasn't under regulation.

Anyway, he's gone and that's all I'm concerned about.

My leg is coming along. It would have been better if Adam wasn't whispering sweet nothings into my ear in the bed next to mine all night. I nearly bumped the damn thing half a dozen times. I want to feel bad for the guy; he's got something because I don't think he subconsciously knows that he's even talking. He cries and shakes in his sleep and looks like he reaches out to grasp something that isn't actually there. Luke, speak of the devil, always convicts the poor bastard, like he has absolutely nothing better to do. I want to slam the son of a bitch to the gravel, but if I make a move… let's just say I won't die natural causes.

Then again, who _does_ die of natural causes here?


	3. Chapter 3

Sam's Journal 9:54am I don't know what to think anymore. Make me proud, boy. That's all I hear day in and day out. Make you proud? How will I make you proud, Dad, when you trade me in for a psycho lunatic? You traded me, Dad… Luke, the guy I was soldier swapped for… I don't know where the hell his head is but it sure ain't in the game. Sure, he's killed over a dozen men in his first hour on the quarter, but what about me? I thought I was the Golden Boy. I thought I was the best soldier on the goddamn quarter. What about me? I arrived on the Yanks quarters around high noon, barely enough time to move my belongings (or what was left of them) to my new bunker and run into a man I thought I would never see again. I didn't even know he was alive until I met his gaze across the quad. "Sammy?" One word, that's all it took to send me into a tailspin. Not Sam, not even Samuel, but Sammy, the most unpretentious name I'd ever encountered, and it was my own. I ran my name over in my mind multiple times before actually spitting out his. A man was behind him, exchanging a glance from me to him and murmuring something indecipherable in his ear. My feet were absolute led. I was somewhat glad he took the initiative to meet me. He was taller than I remembered which I scoffed at later because he was probably thinking the same thing. His beard was growing in and his emerald eyes looked weary, to say the least. He gave me a hard nudge before lending his hand. Then he said something I'll never forget as long as I live. "Welcome to the winning side, little brother." Castiel's Journal 12:43pm They're pushing the Yanks to the battlefield again, hopefully for the last time. I can't stop thinking about Dean, wondering and waiting for his return. I'm praying it's not in the hospice… I know the chances of seeing him again are thin, like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles. But Dean isn't an ordinary needle… maybe in the eyes of the army, but not to me. Dean has been my only exception. Dean has been the only reason I'm still alive. 


End file.
